


Stonehenge

by cdybedahl



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 13:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1389229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/pseuds/cdybedahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a wonder that not more things got lost or misplaced in the move from Warehouse 12 to Warehouse 13, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stonehenge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starserendipity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starserendipity/gifts).



> Set during the frantic few weeks when HG was a Warehouse agent and lived at the B&B.

Myka senses that something’s off with Helena during breakfast. They’re all around the table, Pete and Claudia and Steve and Artie and Leena and, of course, HG and Myka. Pete and Claudia are trying to explain the greatness of _Firefly_ to Steve. Leena is smiling at them. Artie is trying to ignore them and eat in peace. Myka is looking at Helena, trying to figure out what it is that’s not quite right.  
She’s too silent, to begin with. She doesn’t butt into the _Firefly_ discussion. She’s catching up on a century of popular culture with frightening speed, and it already happens that she makes jokes that Pete and Claudia get but Myka doesn’t. When it happens, it fills Myka with a strange mixture of sadness and pride. But it’s not happening today. Today Helena seems… apprehensive, perhaps? Myka frowns and looks at her. That’s not quite it. Partly, but not entirely. Helena catches her looking, and her odd expression turns into a not very convincing smile.  
That’s what pushes Myka over the edge. She wants Helena to smile genuinely when they look at each other.  
“Helena?” she says. “Is something wrong?”  
Helena shakes her head.  
“It’s probably just me being silly and out of touch,” she says. “I’m sure you guys have things under control.”  
That makes Artie look up.  
“Under control?” he says. “What do we have under control?”  
“Today is the last of April,” Helena says. “And I haven’t heard any plans for tonight.”  
She smiles and shakes her head, returns her attention to her bowl of muesli.  
“It’s just me being silly,” she repeats. “Still used to how we did things at Warehouse 12.”  
Silence has fallen around the table. Everyone’s attention is at Helena.  
“What’s with the last of April?” Myka says.  
Helena looks up at her, and this time her smile is genuine.  
“Tonight is Beltane,” she says, as if that explained anything.  
Pete turns to Myka.  
“Should I know what that is?” he says.  
“It’s a Celtic fertility rite,” Artie says. “That has nothing to do with the Warehouse, as far as I know.”  
Helena puts down her spoon and frowns.  
“You’re not doing the grounding?” she says. “Did you come up with a better way?”  
“Grounding what?” Myka says.  
“Stonehenge, of course,” Helena says. “It accumulates energy from people’s celebrations at Beltane and Samhain, energy that can then be used. Or, rather, not used but safely grounded.”  
“OK, I know Stonehenge,” Pete says. “It’s in England. Last time we were in England, we got you.”  
He turns to Myka.  
“Maybe we should go there again,” he says.  
Claudia stares at Helena.  
“Are you saying that _Stonehenge_ is in the Warehouse?” she says. “The tourist one is a _replica_?”  
By now Helena is openly frowning.  
“Well, yes,” she says. “It was taken in in the 1840s. It was getting too dangerous to let people just stumble into it. Did you really not know this?”  
“No,” Artie says. “We did not.”  
“Oh,” Helena says. “I’m sure it’s not a problem, then. They must have come up with a better way to ground it after I was bronzed. Or maybe it stopped being a problem. Beltane was pretty much just a minor ritual in a few towns in Ireland in my time, I’m sure no one is celebrating it today. So there’d be no energy for it to accumulate, and no need for any grounding.”  
Claudia turns and looks at Myka.  
“Don’t neo-pagans usually…?”  
Myka nods.  
“Yeah,” she says. “They do celebrate Beltane. And there’s an estimated million and a half of them in the USA alone.”  
Artie stands up.  
“Let’s have a look,” he says.

“Right there,” Claudia says some time later, pointing at Artie’s computer screen. “It’s misspelled.”  
Artie leans back in his chair, looking pained.  
“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”  
“Are you telling me,” Myka says, “that the Warehouse misplaced _Stonehenge_? Because someone spelled it ‘Stonehegne’ when they entered it into the system?”  
“Looks like,” Claudia says. “And that made the reminder that was supposed to trigger every year not happen.”  
“That’s insane!” Myka says. “That’s so…”  
“…So very us,” Pete finishes her sentence. “So very Warehouse.”  
“So no fancy apparatus that does the grounding?” Helena asks.  
“Nope,” Claudia says. “Seems it’s just been sitting there gathering energy.”  
“Since 1914,” Steve says. “How much energy are we talking about here?”  
Helena shrugs.  
“No idea,” she says. “Enough to warrant doing something about it once a year when a few thousand Irish peasants fed into it. Now you’re telling me millions of people have been feeding it for a century? It’s difficult to imagine that being good.”  
“Neo-paganism didn’t get going until the sixties, really,” Myka says. “Not that that makes much of a difference.”  
“So where is it?” Pete says. “I know this place is huge, but it feels like we ought to have seen something that big.”  
Claudia reaches over Artie and types on the keyboard with insane speed.  
“Of course,” she says slightly before text appears on the screen. “It’s in the buildings section.”  
Pete’s eyebrows rise.  
“Seriously?” he says. “An entire section?”  
“Yeah,” Claudia says. “We’ve been there. The replica of the B &B is at the edge of it.”  
“There’s a replica of the B&B in here?” Steve asks.  
“Right,” Pete says. “Don’t go in there, man. It’s bad news.”  
“Agent Wells,” Artie says. “Could you be kind enough to describe exactly how you did the grounding back in your day? Maybe we can just scale it up.”  
Helena smiles.  
“Of course,” she says. “We basically did what the revelers did, except inside the stone circle. Lit a few fires, led a cow or two between them a bunch of times, then slaughtered them. The cows, that is.”  
The rest of the gang looks at her.  
“Something about the process made the meat taste delicious,” Helena adds.  
“You ate artifact-affected cows?” Myka asks. “Was that really safe?”  
Helena shrugged.  
“It was already well-established practice when I came to the Warehouse,” she says.  
Artie sighs.  
“All right,” he says. “Pete, Steve, go get us a couple of cows. Claudia, help me do more research. Myka, take agent Wells with you and have a look at the artifact itself. Do whatever preparation she thinks necessary.”  
“Get a couple of cows?!” Pete says. “The closest I’ve been to one of those is a hamburger! Even if we can find someone selling them, I’d have no idea how to get it here!”  
“Figure it out,” Artie says.  
Steve grabs his sleeve.  
“Come on,” he says. “Univille is surrounded by farms. Someone must be willing to sell us a cow.”  
They leave. Artie looks pointedly at Myka.  
“Right,” she says. “Have a look at Stonehenge. Prepare whatever’s needed for when the cows come home.”

While they make their way through the loaded stacks of the Warehouse, Myka wonders if Artie is being nice when he sends her and Helena off together, or if he actually hasn’t noticed that they’re sleeping together. Not that it matters. He did, and here she is paying more attention to Helena’s ass than to where they’re going. It a very nice ass. She likes it a lot. And if you’d told her a couple of years ago that one day she’d be on her way to Stonehenge in a warehouse in South Dakota accompanied by her lesbian lover H G Wells she probably wouldn’t even have understood the sentence. It’s beyond weird. Far past crazy, well into the surreal. And she loves it.  
“So how long is this going to take?” she asks.  
“We need to prepare three or four bonfires,” Helena says. “If our supplies are still there, that shouldn’t take more than an hour. If not, we need to go get firewood.”  
“It’s going to take much longer than that for Pete and Steve to find cows,” Myka says.  
“Most likely,” Helena says. “It would have in London back in my day, and I dare guess it’s much harder to find them now.”  
“So we will have to wait,” Myka says.  
“Indeed we will.”  
“When they brought Stonehenge here, did they just bring the actual stones, or is there grass as well?”  
“There is grass,” Helena says. “Or at least there was.”  
Myka hurries a couple of steps, catching up with Helena and putting an arm around her waist. She puts a quick kiss on the side of Helena’s neck.  
“That’ll help pass the time,” she says.  
Helena smiles at her and makes an exaggerated gesture of shock.  
“Agent Bering!” she says. “Are you suggesting that we engage in lewd and indecent behavior in the Warehouse?”  
“I believe I am,” Myka says.  
“I have never!” Helena says. “But I suppose that times change, and I will just have to learn to change with them.”  
“You have too,” Myka says. “Yesterday, actually.”  
They go on like that for some time. Myka manages to keep from laughing most of the time. Helena comes close to losing her poise only once, when Myka pulls her blouse lose from her pants and slides her hand under the cloth.  
“What would Artie say if he knew?” Helena says.  
“He won’t,” Myka says.  
“Claudia, then? Or Mrs Frederic?”  
The thought of Mrs Frederic suddenly appearing while they’re half-dressed and fondling each other suddenly seems far too likely. Myka removes her hand.  
“We could ask them to join, perhaps,” Helena says. “I’ve seen how Claudia looks at you, and Mrs Frederic must have learned many interesting things in her life.”  
“I only want you,” Myka says. “No one else. Also, ew.”  
Helena pulls her closer.

The room where Stonehenge is stored is, predictably enough, huge. The stone circle itself is more than thirty yards across, and there is plenty of room around it. The tallest stones are almost four times as tall as Myka, but the Warehouse’s normal ceiling is plenty high enough for that. There is, as Helena said, grass. There are sunlamps to keep it alive, and something to water it, although it’s not immediately obvious what. Outside the circle, the grass is knee-high. Inside the circle, it’s golf-green smooth.  
“Did it always do that with the grass?” Myka says.  
“Yes,” Helena said. “It’s weird but harmless. Come on, the firewood and the dishes should be over here.”  
Myka can’t stop looking at the stones as they walk. Helena obviously knows where she’s going, and there’s nothing to look out for. So she can study the fascinating thing in the middle of the room. And once she’s looking, it doesn’t take her long to notice the shimmering in the air. It looks like vast amounts of hot air rising.  
“Helena?” she says.  
When Helena turns to look, she simply points.  
“That’s new,” Helena says after a few moments.  
“Do you think it’s dangerous?” Myka says.  
“Yes,” Helena says. “I just don’t know in what way. My guess is it’s what happens when you don’t ground it for a hundred years.”  
Myka thinks for a moment.  
“So we have to go into that,” she says.  
“If we want to do the grounding the way we did it back in twelve, yes,” Helena says.  
“Better get started, then,” Myka says.  
All the things are where Helena expects them to be. Three large iron dishes on legs. Lots of firewood. Flint, steel and tinder.  
“Do we have to use those?” Myka says, fascinated, once Helena has explained what they are.  
“No,” Helena says. “Which is a good thing. Lighters are _so_ much better. I think this stuff is just here as backup, actually, because the last time I did this we used matches.”  
Myka nods, then looks at the stone circle and the air disturbances.  
“We should probably go in there unencumbered first,” she says. “Just to see what it’s like. If we find we need to dodge or run I’d rather not be carrying stuff.”  
“Makes sense,” Helena says.

When Myka crosses into the circle her skin tingles. It feels almost but not quite like static electricity. She stops, waiting to see if something more will happen. Nothing does.  
“Well, that wasn’t bad,” Helena says. “Shall we get the fire dishes? The sooner we finish placing them, the sooner we can do… other things.”  
“Give me a moment to check in with Claudia,” Myka says. “Maybe an alarm went off or something.”  
She takes out her Farnsworth and opens it. Claudia responds almost instantly.  
“Talk to me,” she says.  
“Hi,” Myka says. “Just checking in. We’ve entered the stone circle. We can see it’s active somehow, but we have no idea what if anything it’s doing.”  
“OK,” Claudia says. “Nothing’s happened up here. No news from Pete and Steve either.”  
“We’ll start preparing,” Myka says. “Let us know if something happens.”  
Claudia nods and closes the connection. Myka turns to Helena.  
“All right,” she says. “Let’s get carrying.”

Placing the fire dishes, filling them with firewood and stacking enough extra wood near them to keep the fires going all night is surprisingly hard work. At least it’s surprising to Myka. Helena seems to be taking it in stride. Although she’s done it before, of course, so at least she knows what to expect. She also looks all graceful while she’s working, like it was an elaborate dance rather than just work. The way she looks and the way she moves turns Myka on quite a bit. It would annoy her if she didn’t know that she’ll get to play with all that later.  
Hard work is sweaty. Myka’s jacket gets left in the grass pretty soon, and she wishes she could reasonably remove more. Her usual clothes aren’t really made for physical labor. They move all wrong, pull in the wrong places and generally feel uncomfortable. She can’t help pulling at them and scratching where they itch.  
She makes it almost all the way until the end. When she’s about to pick up the very last armful of firewood it gets too much. Not caring for niceties like opening buttons, she simply tears her blouse open and tosses it aside. She’d like to get rid of the bra too, but simple self preservation makes her wait until she’s not about to hold a bunch of wood in her arms. Getting splinters in her boobs does not sound like fun. Although maybe she’ll claim to have one so Helena can try to suck it out.  
Myka looks for her girlfriend. She’s over by one of the fire dishes, preparing the fire. She’s done sort of the opposite of what Myka’s done, and taken off her pants and shoes. Her long shapely legs are perfectly visible, as is most of her just as shapely ass. Some of her butt is covered by sensible white cotton panties, but that is highly fixable.   
Before she really knows what she’s doing, Myka has kicked off her own shoes and is running through the grass towards Helena. When she, again not knowing why, lets out a loud exuberant laugh, she gets Helena’s attention. Helena turns, looks at her. A smile spreads across her face, a smile so full of lascivious promise that it momentarily takes Myka’s breath away. For a moment, their eyes meet. Myka can see how much Helena loves her, and she knows that Helena sees how much Myka loves her (a lot (would die for her (Yellowstone))).   
An eye-blink later, Helena is off running. Myka takes off after her without thinking. Helena runs light and sure-footed, fast and fleet like a young deer. Muscles play in her slender legs. Black hair streams behind her. It looks like her feet hardly touches the grass she runs over.  
Myka doesn’t run like that. She runs low, powerfully. Her bare feet grip the ground, her legs piston her forward. The sense that there should be thunder as her feet strikes the earth is so strong that she can almost hear the sound even though it’s not there. She laughs as she runs, a deep booming laugh quite unlike her normal one. If Helena is a lithe deer, Myka is a just-grown strong stag forcing her way through the world. For some reason, running doesn’t tire her. Quite the opposite, actually. The faster she runs the more powerful she feels. And if she could just run a little bit faster, she could catch up with Helena, she is sure of it.  
Except Helena runs faster too. It hardly even looks like she runs, more like dancing. The flowers in her hair drop petals behind her, leaving white sparkles in the grass (flowers?). She nimbly jumps up on one of the fire dishes as she runs past it, uses it as a jump-off and launches herself high in the air (impossibly high). She somersaults forward and lands already running between two trees (what trees?).  
Myka plows through the fire dish, brushing it aside with her shoulder, sending it flying (it took both of them to get it there) without even slowing down. She pushes herself harder, tries to run faster, better, more cleverly. She tears off her remaining clothes (a Farnsworth buzzing in her pocket) so she can move more freely, but a growing frustration inside her tells her that she cannot run any faster better harder than she already is. That she will not catch up to Helena. Will not get to take her beloved in her arms and tumble her into the forest’s undergrowth.  
Exactly at the same moment that that bitter knowledge enters Myka’s mind, Helena slows down. Not much, barely anything at all, but enough. Myka is gaining on her. Frustration turns to joy, and she cannot help laughing again, harder, louder. Intense desire lends an extra shred of energy to her legs. She lunges forward to grab hold of Helena. The two of them tumble through the grass and ferns, Myka’s arms around Helena’s bare waist and Helena’s naked arms around Myka’s neck.  
The touch of Helena’s skin is pure ecstasy to Myka. She cannot control herself. She twists, turns, pushes Helena down on her back and straddles her. She has to feel Helena, has to know her eager body right then right there. She kisses her way down the lovely young flesh, and with a feeling she has no words to express her love itself becomes a force pushing into and being enfolded by Helena. Words and thought have been left far behind. All there is is love and life and joy of ever-increasing intensity. She can’t tell any more where Myka ends and Helena begins.  
For one single pure moment everything is _perfect_.  
Then something immaterial explodes out from their joined bodies, rushing out in every direction like a tidal wave. Someone screams, and she cannot tell if it is herself or Helena. She collapses to the ground.

Myka groans. The grass is cold and itchy. The ground she’s lying on is hard. Her feet hurt, and her legs are shivering with exhaustion. She can already tell that she’s going to be incredibly sore tomorrow morning. She’s got grass stains on her hands. Slowly, bit by bit, she takes stock of her physical situation. As she runs out body parts to check, other things pop into her mind. Like the fact that she’s lying naked in the middle of an artifact, with decidedly dodgy memories of how she got there. Or where Helena is. Her insides turn cold.  
“Helena?” she says. “Are you there?”  
“I am,” Helena answers to Myka’s intense relief.  
“Are you OK?” she says, because even if Helena sounds all right she might not be.  
“I’m fine,” Helena says. “Are you?”  
“I think so,” Myka says. “My everything hurts.”  
Helena laboriously gets into a standing position. Myka tries to do the same, but only gets as far as sitting before giving up.  
“What happened?” she says.  
“I think we got, in Claudia’s words, whammied,” Helena says. “Also, the shimmering in the air is gone.”  
Myka looks around. It is indeed. Everything looks clear and normal. Or, well, as normal as an ancient megalith monument stuck in a South Dakota warehouse can.  
“Is that good?” Myka asks.  
“Well, it seems it stopped doing whatever it was doing,” Helena says.  
“Yeah,” Myka says. “Is that good?”  
In the distance, a Farnsworth starts buzzing.  
“Oh, damn,” Myka says.  
The extra feeling of urgency helps her get up. She walks over to the noisy object on shaky legs and picks it up. She’s just about to answer it when Helena coughs behind her.  
“What?” Myka says.  
“You’re…” she says, gesturing at Myka.  
Myka looks down at herself. _Naked_ , is the word Helena doesn’t say. Stark naked.  
“It might be Pete,” Helena says.  
Myka doesn’t answer. She picks up her trousers, since they’re the nearest piece of clothing, and holds them across her chest with her elbows. She flicks the Farnsworth open with a well-practiced move.  
“Finally!” Claudia says from the little screen. “I was starting to fear that you two were…”  
She falls silent. For a moment she just stares. Then she speaks again.  
“What are you wearing?” she says.  
“Nothing,” Myka says. “What’s the situation?”  
“Nothing?” Claudia says. “You’re naked? Why are you naked? Where is HG? Is she naked too?”  
“Claudia?” Myka interrupts. “Why are you calling?”  
“Oh, right,” Claudia says. “We got a huge activity alarm inside the Warehouse. With sirens and everything. In the sector where you are. Did you see anything?”  
Her eyes drops from Myka’s face to a place a little further down. Myka holds on harder to her makeshift cover, trying to figure out what to say. She’s saved by Helena, who puts her arm across Myka’s shoulders. A mostly involuntary look sideways and down tells Myka that Helena hasn’t bothered to find anything to cover herself with.  
“We did,” Helena says. “And we think we accidentally fixed the problem.”  
Claudia’s eyes has gone wide as dinner plates. It’s hard to tell through the little black and white screen, but Myka is pretty sure the young woman is blushing like crazy.  
“Right,” Claudia says. “About that. Did you guys do something… fertility-related?”  
Myka groans and looks away.  
“You could call it that, yes,” Helena says, unabashed.  
“Because I kind of read up on Beltane,” Claudia says, “and what HG described sounds a lot like how that was celebrated back in the 19th century.”  
“Well, it _was_ the 19th century,” Helena says.  
“Only,” Claudia continues, “what the neo-pagans have been doing since the 1950s or so is… less to do with livestock. And more to do with people. But still fertility. If you get my drift.”  
“We do,” Myka says. “We really do.”  
“So we did precisely the right thing!” Helena says. “Excellent. We’ll be up as soon as we can.”  
“I’ll let Artie know the danger is past,” Claudia says. “And to not inquire to hard about how.”

“I still kinda wish you’d remembered to call me and Steve,” Pete says a few weeks later.  
He and Myka are standing on the B&B’s back porch, watching a couple of cows placidly grazing on the lawn.  
“I don’t know,” Myka says. “I kind of like having them here. They’re cute. Also, we get _really_ fresh milk.”  
“Yeah,” Pete says. “I know. But the milk won’t last, and we don’t really know how to care for cows, and I’m not sure it’s legal to keep them like this.”  
Myka sighs.  
“I guess,” she says.  
Steps approach from behind them. Myka recognizes them instantly, and she’s started smiling even before she feels Helena next to her. She puts an arm around her girlfriend’s waist and gives her a quick kiss on the cheek. Since the thing with Stonehenge, they’ve stopped even pretending to hide.  
“Hi,” she says.  
“Hi,” Helena says. “What are you doing?”  
“Discussing the official Warehouse 13 herd of cows,” Pete says.  
“Two cows are not a herd,” Myka says. “You need at least five cows for a herd.”  
“It’s a start,” Pete says.  
“The official Warehouse 13 herd of cows,” Helena says. “It certainly is a strange life we’re living.”  
She’s got a shopping bag in her hand, Myka notices. It’s from the Univille pharmacy.  
“It certainly is,” Myka says. “But I’ve come to like it. What have you got there?”  
“Oh, I needed something,” Helena said. “And then I looked up your 21st century customs, and found I needed something more, and that time I re-used the bag. For the environment. Also I’m really happy to hear that you like having a weird life.”  
Myka frowns.  
“How so?” she says.  
“Remember how we wondered what Stonehenge did with all that energy and why?” Helena says.  
“Yeah,” Pete says. “One more mystery, never to be solved.”  
“Ah,” Helena says.  
Myka looks at her. Her expression is decidedly odd.  
“Helena,” Myka says. “What is going on? What did you figure out about Stonehenge? And what does it have to do with 21st century customs?”  
“Well,” Helena says. “I have no idea about the _why_. But.”  
“You figured out what it did?” Pete says. “How?”  
“‘Figured out’ may be putting it strongly,” Helena says. “It was more like I couldn’t avoid noticing it.”  
She reaches into the shopping bag and takes out a box of cigars.  
“I do believe it is customary to hand these out under the circumstances,” she says. “Although I suspect I’ve misunderstood something about the ritual of it. Possibly they should be handed out later.”  
Myka suddenly understands what Helena is hinting at, and the whole world suddenly swims around her.  
“No!” she says. “You can’t be serious!”  
Except she knows that Helena is serious. This is not something she would ever joke about.  
“Oh, but I am,” Helena says.  
“Oh my God,” Myka says. “Oh my _God_.”  
Pete is frowning.  
“What?” he says. “I don’t get it.”  
“I should be handing the cigars out, not Helena,” Myka says. “And in about seven or eight months rather than now.”  
“What?” Pete says. “Like people do when they’ve had a baby?”  
Myka can see the exact instant when realization hits him.  
“Oh my God!” he says. “You’re having a baby!”  
Helena pulls Myka in closer.  
“Indeed we are,” she says.  
She beams a wide smile at Pete.  
“And I for one,” she says, “think that Myka will make a wonderful father.”

  



End file.
